LBJ1968

Most definitely an unauthorized biography, Cuban agit-prop filmmaker Santiago Alvarez scavenges imagery from LIFE magazine, cowboy movies and Playboy to lampoon Lyndon B. Johnson’s tyranny. The assassinations of John F. Kennedy, his brother Robert and Martin Luther King, Jr. are all laid at Johnson’s doorstep. Delivered with Alvarez’s characteristically incendiary montage, LBJ pivots between ludicrous psychodrama and a sophisticated portrait of the Black Power movement that gets at the rhetorical power of leaders like King and Stokely Carmichael. Fascinating as an outsider’s view of a fractured period of American political life, LBJ remains a vivid embodiment of the internationalist aspirations of the '60s left.

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"Although it is never made explicit, L.B.J. suggests by association that a connection can be made between the three assassinations [of Martin Luther King and the Kennedy brothers] and Johnson's rise to power." - Peter Rist, Offscreen

Member Reviews (3)

This was a waste of my viewing time. Meaningless, disconnected imagery suggesting a malicious connection between Kennedy and Johnson that adds nothing to our understanding of the power struggle between them. A dumb piece of work.

I think this is worth watching if you have a grasp of the politics and want to see something different done to what we normally characterize as the Sixties. I do not think it is meant to be an explanation of who LBJ actually was, but rather a film that weaves together ideas through imagery. It definitely leaves you with weird feelings, but in a good way. I think you have to be open to seeing how a story can be told differently rather than thru traditional narrative,